


Detente, Bala

by tyrannicides



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-21
Updated: 2010-07-21
Packaged: 2017-11-07 21:36:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/435706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyrannicides/pseuds/tyrannicides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set in David-is-in-Real period, throughout 2003 into 2004.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Detente, Bala

The first time David sees Iker, it's a picture in a magazine. He's in an article on up-and-coming keepers, falling out of the air to block a ball. David thinks two things when he sees him: he has good form, and his ears stick out. By the time David transfers to Real, he knows a lot more about Iker—that he has a cool head, that he has quick reflexes, that he doesn't bend under pressure, no matter who's charging the posts or who's taking the penalty. But he still always kind of remembers that picture, when the sun was shining and Iker was fresh-faced and sixteen, falling in the grass.

 

The first time David has a conversation with Iker, or something like one, David's sick. He's been sick all week. Pressure on his ears and sand in his lungs and heat in his head—the worst, though, is his throat. It feels like he's swallowing fire every time he tries to drink something. So far he's been trying his usual work-harder-run-it-off treatment. It isn't really working.

" _Tu garganta_?" Iker asks after practice, slamming his locker shut.

David shakes his head, goes back to stuffing his stuff in his bag. He isn't in the mood. He needs to get home. He needs to sleep. It's bad enough that he can hardly talk with anyone on the pitch. He doesn't need everyone thinking he can't handle a cold. 

"Don't know what you're saying."

Iker pushes his arm. Then he pushes it harder. 

David looks up, annoyed.

" _Te duele la garganta_ , no?" Iker insists. He puts his hand up to his own neck. "... _Troat_?"

"What?" David asks.

"Tho-roat," Iker says. " _Throat_ ," he repeats with a duh face.

"Oh," David says. "Oh, yeah. My throat hurts. My throat is killing me."

Iker nods and hands him a box. David turns it over in his hand. There's a picture of a bull on the front, surrounded by purple flowers. And a windmill.

"What is this?"

Iker answers rapidly in Spanish, and David stares.

"Tea," Iker ventures. "Is tea with throat."

It smells herbal and looks shady. "Oh, right. Thanks."

"Ya," Iker says, slinging his bag over his shoulder. He cranes to look over David's shoulder and suddenly yells after Guti, jogging to catch up. David puts the box in his duffel bag.

 

Victoria finds it later when he's laying on the couch, dozing and watching Spanish game shows.

"What is this?" she asks, reading the back of the box.

David peeks up over a pillow to see what she's holding, then collapses again. "Tea, I think. One of my teammates gave it to me. I don't know." Victoria drinks tea. Maybe Victoria will want it.

"You know, this could be really good for you. It has tons of stuff for colds in it." She reads more, leaning on a hip. "...Really David, it has good stuff. You have a sore throat, right?"

David grunts.

She makes him a mug, loaded with honey. It smells like a vitamin store. But then he drinks it, and it doesn't taste that bad, really. Just plants. And almost immediately after he gulps some down, his throat opens up a bit. His sinuses clear, he can sit up without feeling dizzy. He actually sleeps through the night. He finishes the box in a three days.

 

When David gets on the bus they're taking to Seville, he edges past Ronaldo and Javier scuffling in the aisle and sits down next to Iker.

"Hey." He kicks his bag under the seat in front of him. "Thanks for the tea. It helped."

Iker pulls off his headphones and looks at David's throat. His eyebrows go up. "Better?"

"Yeah, better. Thanks."

Iker notices him looking down at the screen of his iPod and hands it to him. For a while David scrolls through the songs like he knows what he's reading and then he figures, what the hell. It's clear that Iker knows more English than David knows Spanish, and it's a six hour ride, so. He points to _Algo de mi_. "What does this mean?"

And that's how they spend the trip. David points at song titles and Iker tries to give him something in English and over the next couple hours, David's vocabulary grows. He learns _protector_ , _placentero_ , _sudor_ , _ciervo_ \--and that Iker turns his mouth down and shrugs his shoulders high when he doesn't know something, right before he starts laughing. Iker's eyes crinkle up in the corners when he laughs.

"Right. _Tocar_. _Tocar_ means 'to touch', yeah? _Tocar_."

" _Tocar_." Iker rolls the 'r'. He opens his eyes wide, encouraging.

" _Tocar_." David tries but he might fail miserably, because Iker laughs and then David's laughing too and. "Okay, okay, no, right, this one. Co-rah-zone."

"Corazón."

"Means?"

" _Corazón es_ , ehhhh." Iker looks up and blows a stream of air out of the corner of his mouth, thinking. "Uhhhhh. Hard."

"It's hard?" Borja mumbles in his sleep and turns over. They both look at him for a second, but when he doesn't wake up, they keep talking. A little quieter, though.

"Hard." Iker puts his hand on his chest.

"Hard. Oh, _heart_ ," David says.

"Har-t," Iker agrees.

 

The match is going well. It's the fourth one David's started for Real and the turf is good, their passes are on and David's already scored once. He's in a groove. So when a fight breaks out in the middle of the pitch over—someone dove, maybe, David didn't see—it's not like he bolts over there screaming. He feels pretty good. He wants to keep playing. But then he catches it out of the corner of his eye—Saviola bumps up against Iker, yelling and pushing forward—and suddenly David's launching in and he doesn't know why he wasn't incredibly pissed in the first place, because this is bullshit. He's seeing red and grabbing jerseys and he feels someone pulling him back, maybe a couple people, and in the end he's lucky he isn't carded.

They win by two. It's after the game, when adrenaline starts to ebb and he has time to think straight, when Iker puts his arm around his waist as they're walking off the pitch and pulls David against his hip, mussing his hair in the tunnel and grinning with crinkles in the corners of his eyes, that David realizes he might be in trouble.

 

Most of the team is out eating lunch on a day off, packed in a hole-in-the-wall pub in Madrid. David's introduced to seafood _paella_ and grilled eggplant and _ensaladilla rusa_ and Luis forces fried peppers on him until he feels like he'll puke. He still can't understand much but his teammates are saying things to him now, in simple words that are considerate instead of condescending. At one point David actually makes a pun in Spanish and they all roar.

Then sometime after one, David's stabbing at his shellfish and Raúl checks his watch and stretches and says something that probably means he'll see them later, and in the next fifteen minutes, after they've all paid their bills and kind of just. Left. David wonders if they have a practice he forgot about, and Iker seems to notice he looks a little lost. He wipes his mouth with a napkin and thank god, because David's been wanting to get rid of the seasoning in the corner of his mouth for about ten minutes now.

" _Siesta_ ," Iker says. "C'mon. _Siesta_."

 

A crowded subway ride and five blocks in the hot sun later, and David ends up in Iker's apartment on the seventh floor. There's old-time record music playing quietly through the walls and Iker slides him a glass with a chip in the rim, pulls out a pitcher of horchata. David gulps down about half of it at once. It's cool and quiet inside, insulated from the heat and smoke and noise of the city. David wonders why every country doesn't do this.

His body doesn't really understand the concept of an afternoon nap, so he spends some time organizing Iker's fridge while Iker watches TV, icing a bruise on his bicep. At 3:30, Victoria calls. They laugh about a guy on her flight and David says hi to Brooklyn and Victoria gives him their room number in Paris. David momentarily considers trying to memorize it before he realizes there's no fucking way.

"Oi, Iker." He precariously wedges the tiny phone in his shoulder and pops his head out of the kitchen. Iker is completely engrossed with the TV. David bets his ice pack is getting mushy. "Where are your pens?"

"In my drawer," Iker says after a long pause, not looking away from the screen. "In my drawer on the right." 

The more time they spend alone together, the more confident Iker seems to be with attempting English. He usually has a shitty American accent (his secondary school teacher was American and he dressed very well, Iker told David one night in Málaga, too drunk on sangria and too open in the eyes and too close on the bench), but sometimes David can hear him picking up a bit of Essex too, mostly in his a's and his r's and his h's. _I does nuh fink so_ , he'll say. _I do nuh fink so, Daveed._

At one point David finds a bag of cardoon stems in the bottom of the fridge and doesn't really feel familiar enough with the vegetable to judge if they're still good or not.

"Hey, are these good? ...Ripe," he clarifies.

"Um. Yes." Iker still hasn't changed his ice pack and David puts the cardoons back but on the top shelf where they'll be used soon and grabs a beer, then he digs in the freezer to find a replacement pack.

He sinks down next to Iker—too close on accident, their thighs are touching—but Iker doesn't tense and he doesn't move, so David doesn't either.

"Hold your arm out, yeah?"

Iker obediently extends his elbow. "Did you seen this?"

David looks up from the bandage at the screen. It takes about two seconds of Arnold and sunglasses and bad special effects to recognize Terminator. Lynne had this Terminator phase when David was a kid. She'd worn out their VHS copy, replaying it over and over in their cold brick basement in Leytonstone—David is pretty sure she was hot for Michael Biehn. David can recite every line in this movie with his eyes closed and Iker is watching him, ready to change the channel as soon as David tells him so.

Iker's been glued to the screen for an hour.

"No, I haven't," David says. He goes back to trying to figure out this weird strap thing.

Iker sets the remote down, grinning. "He's, uh, robot." He shifts his arm to let David get up underneath to feel for the velcro and leans forward, maybe so he doesn't have to break eye contact with the movie. David's nose presses into his shoulder for a moment. "And he kills." Iker gestures at the screen with David's bottle. David isn't sure how he got it.

"Why?" David asks. He's fucked up the velcro. It's sticking to itself, wet with condensation from the ice pack.

Iker is taking a long swig of the beer but he swallows fast, eager to respond. "Uhhhh, to prevent the future child, no? The future child and the robot."

"And the robot?"

"End the robot," Iker clarifies. Then he repeats the eh sound to himself. _eh-nd._

David spends the rest of the afternoon lounging on Iker's couch. He works at his Cruzcampo and dozes in the heat, listening to a Spanish voice actor trying to sound American trying to sound Austrian. Occasionally Iker tries to translate the parts he thinks are important. His voice is low and lazy and it thrums in David's body, deeper than the traffic outside or the fan on the windowsill. ("He wants this man to give the clothes, now. Right now." "He says that he will return." That's David's favorite.)

He feels Iker carefully take the mostly empty bottle out of his hand when he's half-asleep, hears him set it down as quietly as he possibly can on the floor next to their feet.

("He says he receive the photograph of her, when she is smaller and he was also smaller, and he remembers it very well and that he loves her all since then.")

David wakes up later to find that the sun is almost set. The sky is gray, the lights in the city are glowing. The music has stopped and the smell of flowers is heavy on the breeze from the window—jasmine and sage blooming in the courtyard, David thinks. Iker is snoring softly on the couch. His head is a few inches from David's shoulder and Victoria's number is illegible in David's palm, smudged from sweat or condensation. Maybe both.

 

They're the last two left in the lockers after an away game at Valencia because Iker took especially long to shower. David uses the time to clean up his facial hair—it's getting ridiculous—and he doesn't look up when Iker emerges with a towel around his waist. He's searching hard in his bag for something and he runs his hand through his hair in frustration. Then he notices that made it stick up in the front, so he goes to flatten it again.

"It looks good like that," David says. The scissors snap as he trims his goatee.

"Looks good," Iker repeats.

"Sure," David says, returning to the mirror. Iker goes back to digging through his bag, and suddenly, David realizes that he's listening to Iker mumble in Spanish and that he understands what most of what he's saying. He couldn't repeat it, but he understands. Iker's forgotten his deodorant in Madrid, and he wishes he had a granola bar.

"Look, borrow mine," David says. He tosses Iker his stick and Iker catches it when it was supposed to hit him square on his chest. David supposes that's why he's a keeper.

Later that night, they're all out at a club just off the shore. There's Christmas lights and sand in the floor and the music is pulsing and David is mostly drunk, he thinks. The air is humid and close and salty and Iker is pressed flush against him in the booth, talking right into his ear because otherwise talking is inaudible—his accent is so strong that David can't understand him and he smells like David, smells like he's wearing his shirt or his sweat. When David talks back, sometimes he presses his nose under Iker's ear after he's finished, closes his eyes and rests his chin on his shoulder. Iker lets him. David's half-hard under the table the entire night.

 

It's a given that they sit next to each other on the bus now. Sometimes, if it's late at night, Iker sleeps on David's shoulder.

 

David doesn't cheat. He has sex with people who aren't his wife, but he doesn't cheat. Cheating's different. Cheating implies the sex is more than masturbating with a living human being—it implies emotional commitment and mutual benefit and other words that sound like terms from financial advisory firms and—it implies that you like the way that person moves against you because they're them. Because you know their knobbly knees and their crooked teeth and the way their ears stick out a bit too far, the embarrassing way their breath hitches when something hurts or maybe when it feels too good, the shape of their mouth when you push and push and hold—it means a whole gamut of things David doesn't touch. David knows he's an asshole. He knows he's a lot of things. But he isn't-

He doesn't cheat.

 

David has never really seen Iker angry. Well, he's seen him angry on the pitch. He's seen him throw out cusses and kick the turf and smack the goalpost. But he's never seen him mad like he is after the mess of a Sevilla match. And when he shoves Oscar, David's had enough. "What's your problem, mate?"

"The problem," Iker says, still walking away. "My problem. Because—" 

He wheels around and then he's pointing at David, stabbing with his finger, and he launches into lightning fast Spanish that David can't even come close to understanding. David hears "midline" and "pitch" and "fucker" and "fuck you" but he gives up trying to process because Iker doesn't stop. He just keeps ranting and ranting and ranting until eventually he's like an animal in a cage, beating itself bloody against the bars. David can't even tell if he's angry or sad. Then it's over as fast as it began. Iker huffs and throws his arms up and storms off to the showers and David is left standing in his wake, feeling like an uprooted tree or an overturned car or one of those dogs in post-hurricane BBC footage, paddling around in debris with nowhere to land.

"He does not like for lose. Especially when—his fault?"

David looks at Guti. He wonders if he looks as confused as he feels. Apparently he does, because Guti feels the need to lower his voice and continue. "And his girlfriend, no? They not for long time. ...Lonely." David feels a sick twist in his chest. "Iker is lonely, you know what I say?"

David doesn't. He doesn't know if that means Iker and his girlfriend haven't fucked in a while, or Iker and his girlfriend aren't going to last a while or—actually, David didn't even know Iker had a girlfriend in the first place. He knows Iker likes brunettes. He knows Iker likes girls with long legs. He's watched him press against tan barely-twenties in the discoteca—not grinding, because that isn't Iker, but crowding. Nudging his face into their necks and cupping a hand behind their thighs, running it up, smooth and hot, under the fabric of their flowy print skirts. He's seen girls sigh and open their legs for him, hearing whatever he's mumbling in their ears.

David's seen that.

 

It's six days of not talking much past the niceties and staying late after practices and smashing balls into the goal by himself, over and over and over, until they turn the floodlights off and force him off the pitch, and then David makes up his mind. And once he's made up his mind, once he has a plan, he carries it out. He carries it out with the kind of efficiency and dedication he gives most things he's decided on.

It's only in the moment of truth, when the girl is standing somewhere behind him and the smell of her perfume is oppressive and Iker's face is outside the peephole, looking down at his shoes, that David suddenly—

But this isn't any different, he reminds himself. It isn't any different than jumping into a fight for him or cleaning out his fridge for him or watching Terminator for him, it's just.

He opens the door.

Iker comes in with the face he's had for close to a week now, set somewhere between apathetic and resentful and tired. He looks at David like he might say something—then he notices at the girl. Whatever he's thinking, his expression doesn't change. David isn't sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

But Iker's eyes linger on her. Her hair is chocolate brown. Her legs go on for miles, her dress fits like a glove, the straps of her heels wrap up past her ankle. Iker doesn't move at all when she steps around David and cups his face in her hand, leans down to press careful kisses under his jaw. 

David can hear the sound of her lips on his skin. It's happening fast. It doesn't feel real. And Iker lets her kiss him, but he's looking at David the whole time. Even when she opens her mouth against his pulse, when she reaches down to palm the front of his pants.

The girl backs him up and sits him on the bed, and Iker breaks his eyes from David's to watch her kneel between his knees. David settles in an armchair in the corner. He watches her nuzzle Iker's thigh and nip over his jeans and he sees Iker bite his lip for a second, the kind of momentary pain you give yourself just to make your body slow down. David wonders how long it's been for him. If his girlfriend won't put out or if he's just too tired after practice to put in the effort, if he pulls off his gloves and collapses on his bed and fucks his hand, maybe, when he's alone and half-asleep and his apartment is dark and his body is aching. David goes home to Victoria every night. He hadn't even—

"Leave it," he says. The girl's quick. She's already managed to unbutton Iker's pants and she was moving to the buttons of his shirt, rubbing his nipples and nosing at the skin where his hair meets his neck, but David wants her to leave it on. He wants to see it on. Iker looks up at him, and David thinks he's beginning to understand.

He leans back and closes his eyes when she mouths over his boxers, elbows locked. David can hear everything from where he's sitting—the soft sucking sounds, the catches in Iker's breath—and when he sees Iker's dick disappear into her mouth and Iker's jaw drop and his brows pull together, David presses his palm over his own cock for a moment. Iker shifts his hips up a bit before he stops himself, his fists tight in the covers. There isn't anything left of the anger in his face, or the apathy. He looks young and disbelieving. Overwhelmed.

"Put his hand in your hair." David says. "He'll never do it on his own."

She does, and it isn't until she takes Iker down to the back of her throat and hums that he compulsively pulls. 

" _Lo siento_ ," he mutters, fast and breathless, but she does it again and he gasps and pulls harder. She fondles his balls and rubs the tip of his dick over her lips, but it isn't until she traces her finger lower, when she pushes with a gentle promise of pressure that his mouth cracks open and his head falls back and he finally moans. She slides her mouth up his dick again, encouraged by the response, swallows him down and bobs her head until Iker's elbows buckle—he falls back on the bed and he's forming silent words with his mouth— _puta madre, puta madre_ , David thinks—then _joder joder_ and he starts something else and cuts himself off—and opens his eyes and looks at David, and his eyes are like a deer's.

"Stop." The girl looks back at him and David knows she's doubting him, doubting that Iker's that close, but Iker grits his teeth and makes a strained desperate sound and she looks back down at him, surprised. "I want you to finish him off with your hand. Push his shirt up. I want him to come on his stomach."

Iker moans hearing it and David isn't sure if it's because he understands what's coming or because he heard David's voice. He watches Iker's eyes search the ceiling when she works his shirt up under his armpits, then watches them squeeze shut again when she wraps her hand around him. She pumps him once and Iker bites his lip and makes this sound, like a kid, and David has a ridiculous urge to tell him that it's alright, everything's going to be alright.

In the end, he doesn't say anything. He watches her work him tight and fast, watches Iker take a huge suck of air and grab the sheets—he twists his hips and tenses, taut and lean, and just like that, he spurts on his belly. Then again, a little more, before he dribbles on her hand. His abs clench and unclench and clench again and he blushes across his shoulders but David doesn't see any of that, really. He was watching Iker's face. Watching his mouth open.

It's only when the girl stands and works the kinks out of her legs that David realizes he's been gripping the armrests so hard his fingers are numb.

She leaves the come on Iker's stomach like they'd agreed on and takes the money and leaves like they'd agreed on too and David can barely look at Iker, chest heaving and eyes unfocused, before he shuts himself in the bathroom and yanks his zipper down and jerks off like he's fifteen and desperate. When he finishes and cleans himself up, his legs don't feel right. He realizes, belatedly, that his knees are weak.

He splashes his face with water and leans on the sink for a few moments, staring at himself in the mirror, and his heart-rate's almost back to normal when his phone vibes. It's Victoria. It feels oddly anti-climatic when he presses "Ignore".

Iker's cleaned up and kicked his pants and socks off by the time David gets out, but he's still in the same position, sprawled out on the sheets. His shirt's still rucked up past his nipples. His hair's still a mess. He looks sleepy and boneless and totally, completely content.

"Hey, I'm ordering Chinese," David says, dialing. He's proud of how steady his voice sounds. The smell of the girl's perfume is fading—now it's mostly Iker. His cologne, his come, his laundry detergent. "What do you want."

Iker hums thoughtfully, with this dopey smile on his face. He rubs his eye while he's thinking about it and David's fingers move on their own, like they're touching something. He thrums them on the table.

"Beefs and broccoli," Iker says. His voice is wrecked, but. He sounds happy. Iker is happy.

"Hi, _habla inglés_? Yeah, for pick-up. An order of Mongolian chicken and an order of beef and broccoli. And some egg rolls. Uh, what, three? Yeah, three egg ro-"

" _Con arroz_ ," Iker says suddenly. He's worming himself further up on the bed, blindly grabbing for a pillow.

"Wait, wait, with rice. Brown. Yeah. Sure. No, that's it. Great, thanks."

David shuts his phone with an audible snap and pulls his trainers on. Doubleknots the laces, like always. He's stretching his back when notices a wadded-up tissue on the floor, about two feet away from the trashcan.

"You missed," he says, picking it up and dropping it in the can. 

Iker grins like he knows David's smiling, even when his eyes are closed. He's vaguely trying to pull the blanket up but it's stuck. David yanks out where it's tucked under the mattress and puts it in his hand. "I'm going to get the food."

He pauses for a moment, then leans down and drops a kiss in Iker's hair. Because that's what he always does before he goes somewhere. That's just what they do.

When he's closing the door behind him, he notices Iker, mostly asleep, tugging at his hair to make it stick up in the front.


End file.
